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What Is the Advanced Canada Workers Benefit (ACWB)? How the Advance Payments Work

Updated

The advance Canada Workers Benefit (ACWB) is not a separate benefit. It’s part of your Canada Workers Benefit (CWB), paid before you file your tax return instead of all at once with your refund. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) started paying advances automatically in July 2023. This page explains how the advances are worked out and settled; for the dates, see CWB payment dates. Other programs are in the benefits guide.

How the advance works

  1. You qualify for the CWB on your return for one year.
  2. The CRA pays up to 50% of the CWB from that return in advance, with 50% of the disability supplement if you get one, in three payments: July, October and the following January.
  3. You file your return for the current year. CRA works out your actual CWB and subtracts the advances.

How CRA decides who gets advances:

  • You don't apply: CRA decides whether you qualify when you file your return and sends the advances automatically.
  • You are entitled to a CWB amount on line 45300 of your return.
  • CRA receives that return before November 1 of the benefit period, which runs from July to the following June; a return received after November 1 gets no advances for that period.
  • You are a resident of Canada on the first day of the payment period.

For example, a single worker with $1,633 of CWB for the 2025 tax year, the maximum, can expect advances totalling about $817 the following year.

What is the ACWB notice?

If you received advance payments, the CRA sends you an RC210 slip, the Advanced Canada Workers Benefit Statement. It shows the advances issued to you for the tax year printed on it: box 10 for the basic CWB and box 11 for the disability supplement. You report those amounts on your return for that year, as settling the advance explains, and you can view the slip online in My Account. For your next payment and its amount, see checking your advance.

Settling the advance at tax time

CRA issues an RC210 slip showing the advances you received. You enter the total on line 41500, and Schedule 6 calculates your full CWB. Then:

ResultWhat happens
Your CWB is more than the advancesYou get the difference with your refund
Your CWB equals the advancesNothing more is paid
Your CWB is less than the advances, for example because your income roseLine 41500 takes your CWB amount, the smaller of the two, instead of the advances, so the return pays nothing more and collects nothing

Schedule 6 puts the smaller of your CWB and your advances on line 41500, which the return adds to your net federal tax, while your full CWB is claimed as a credit on line 45300.

If you have a spouse or common-law partner, the person who claims the basic CWB reports the RC210 slips issued to both of you. If neither of you claims the basic CWB, one of you still reports all of them.

Who gets advances

Anyone who qualifies for the CWB can get advances in the following benefit period under the conditions above, including Quebec residents, who have their own CWB amounts. The CWB itself has its own conditions, set out on the CWB page.

For a couple, only one spouse gets the advances for the family: the one with the higher working income, or the first to file if both earned the same. If one spouse is eligible for the disability tax credit, that spouse gets the family’s basic advance and their own disability supplement; if both are, one gets the basic advance and each gets their own supplement.

Why is my advance low, or why did it stop?

Each advance payment is 1/6 of the CWB, basic amount and disability supplement together, worked out for the year before.

Most changes during the year, such as a new partner, a separation, a move or a change in dependants, don’t change the advances unless you ask for a reassessment and your CWB changes. The exceptions: you aren’t eligible for the rest of the year’s advances if you emigrate or are incarcerated for 90 consecutive days or more (payment periods before that still count), and no advances are paid for someone who died before the benefit year began in July.

Because the advances come from the year before’s CWB, a return that gives you no CWB, for example because your income rose above the phase-out, leads to no advances in the benefit period that follows.

Separately, if the CRA decides it overpaid your advances, it tells you on your notice of assessment for that year and collects the debt from your tax refund. Benefits and your tax return covers overpayments.

Checking your advance

In My Account, go to “Benefits and credits” and then the Canada Workers Benefit to see your advance amounts and payment dates.

Sources

The figures and rules on this page come from these sources, last checked against them between October 4, 2026 and October 13, 2026. How we check facts.